


Starting to Unwind

by HapaxLegomenon



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Shiro (Voltron) Needs a Break, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 03:50:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12148008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HapaxLegomenon/pseuds/HapaxLegomenon
Summary: “We decided,” Lance says, “that you need a day off.”Shiro immediately stiffens.  “We don’t have time --”“Yes we do,” Pidge says firmly.  “We already cleared it with the Princess and Coran -- who said it was a great idea, by the way -- so no training, no leader-ing, no worrying, just relax and let us take care of you for once, okay?”Or; Shiro works too hard, and the other paladins encourage him to take a break.





	Starting to Unwind

Shiro twitches awake from a rare nap to a knock and the fading echo of a bloodthirsty crowd.  He takes a centering breath, and another, and stares up at the low ceiling, willing away the hop-skip-start of his pulse and the persistent, aching pull of his prosthetic. 

The knock sounds again, and Shiro scrubs his left hand over his face.  “Yeah, coming,” he manages to call.

Lance is leaning in the doorway when Shiro taps it open, cheeks stretched with a wide grin.

“Shiro, my man, my dude, my, uh, homie.”

Shiro smiles a little despite himself.  “What’s up, homeskillet?” he deadpans.

His response clearly catches Lance off-guard, and he bursts out with a single loud guffaw.  “You did not seriously just said that,” he snickers.

Shiro just looks at him.

Lance raises an eyebrow, then nods.  “Yeah, agreed, retire that one?”

“Good choice.”  

Lance slings an arm around Shiro’s shoulders and insistently pulls him down the hallway, chattering away.  Shiro thinks the lounge room is empty at first, when Lance steers them through the door, but then he sees a puff of brown hair poking out of a truly prodigious pile of blankets and pillows on one of the sunken couches, and his eyebrows pinch in reflexive concern.  Pidge generally isn’t one for hanging out in common areas alone -- she’s usually in her hangar or bouncing ideas back and forth with Hunk in the kitchen or ferreting through the abandoned rooms of the castle.

Lance gets an unholy, gleeful grin across his face.  Before Shiro thinks to stop him, he’s slipped away to sneak up behind Pidge, and in one swift movement he snatches the headphones off of her head and yells, “ _Pidge look out!_ ” into her ear.

Predictably, she shrieks in surprise, and Lance’s bark of laughter cuts off when Pidge reflexively brings her elbow up to clock him hard under the jaw.

She hisses a vehement, “ _Idiot_ ,” as Lance whimpers, then glances up at Shiro and mutters, “He’s lucky I don’t have my bayard on me,” which is undeniably true.

“I bit my tongue,” Lance grouses, but he leans over the back of the couch to rest his cheek on Pidge’s head and peek at her holoscreen.  “Goin’ good?”

She nods.  “Good to go,” she says, a hint of pride in her voice, and Lance reaches down for a high-five.

“What are you two conspiring about?” Shiro asks.  Past experience has proven that he’s right to be wary when Lance and Pidge co-operate on a project.  He hasn’t forgotten what they’ve come to refer to as the Spicy Space Ketchup Incident.    

“Shiro!” Lance pats the back of the couch beside Pidge.  “Come sit down.”  They both look up at him with expectant faces.

“Um,” Shiro says, which is apparently too long of a delay because Lance hops up and tugs him down onto the couch.  Pidge immediately scoots so that their legs are pressed together, and hands him her headphones.  He sits for a minute without putting them on.  “What’s going on?”

“We decided,” Lance says from behind him, ignoring the flinch when he starts massaging the tense muscles in Shiro’s shoulders, “that you need a day off.”  

Shiro immediately stiffens, and Lance’s fingers press harder.  “We don’t have time --”

“Yes we do,” Pidge says firmly.  “We already cleared it with the Princess and Coran -- who said it was a great idea, by the way -- so no training, no leader-ing, no _worrying_ , just relax and let us take care of you for once, okay?”

“We’ve got an entire thing planned out,” Lance adds, voice earnest, and Shiro clenches his jaw against the sudden swell of emotion that squeezes around his stomach and heart.  He nods once, at a loss for words.

Pidge nudges his side, a small, understanding smile on her lips, and she curls up against him.  “Put those on,” she insists, gesturing towards the headphones.  So he does, and his eyes widen.

“How did you…?”

Pidge shrugs, looking tremendously pleased with herself.  “Matt may have mentioned your immense love of old dad music once or twice.  Me and Lance had a few songs, and him’n’Hunk had a bunch of old movies I could rip from, and the Alteans have an entire collection of Creedence Clearwater Revival music in one of the archive computers for some reason?  So… yeah.”

Shiro doesn’t know what to say, so he wraps his flesh arm around Pidge’s shoulders and squeezes hard.  She hugs him back, and Lance’s surprisingly skillful hands work at the tight-wound knots of muscle in his shoulders and back and neck, and he melts back into the pile of cushions, eyes half-closed and the closest to relaxed he’s been in _years_.

“S’good,” he murmurs.  “Thanks.”  Lance says something back, but Shiro doesn’t quite hear him over the music, and he doesn’t really care.  He loses track of how long they sit there like that -- he sees Pidge start to get fidgety and open up a new screen on her tech pad, but considering that she’s usually doing at least three things at once, that’s not really indicative of much.

And then -- Shiro sits up abruptly, pulling the headphones off of one ear, because -- _that_ _smell._

He realizes that Hunk is walking into the room, carrying a big pot, Keith trailing after him with an armful of bowls and sporks.

“Did it work?” Lance asks eagerly, and Pidge sits up and pauses the music, but Shiro doesn’t even register the change because he’s assaulted by a kaleidoscope of memories, of midnight meals and spartan dormitory rooms and studying for exams and the exhilarating, heart-racing feeling of independence and learning and _freedom_.

“Hunk,” he says, dazed.  “Hunk.  What -- why does that smell like --” he can’t even finish the question, and he can’t take his eyes off of the pot.  His stomach growls.

“Keith said you really like mac and cheese,” Hunk says as he puts the pot down on the little coffee table, looking up at Shiro through his bangs.  Shiro nods fervently, and he sees Keith smirk out of the corner of his eye.  He’s practically vibrating with impatience as Hunk lifts the lid and starts portioning out the food, and his first bite has him collapsing back against the cushions and moaning in a way that’s practically obscene.

“Wow,” Lance says, and he sounds equal parts amused and worried. “Hunk, I think you broke him.  You okay, Shiro?”

Shiro nods reverently.  “ _So_  good,” he says through a full mouth.  “How?”

Lance leans over the back of the couch, his own bowl dangling dangerously, and he starts, “So get this, turns out Kaltenecker is a girl cow --”

“She has an udder, Lance, seriously, _how_  did you not notice that?” Pidge snarks.  Lance sticks his tongue out.

Hunk nods.  “Yeah yeah, so, I’ve been working on making cheese for, like, a while, and pasta is pretty simple, with that flour stuff the Alteans have?  And the cheese isn’t exactly right yet, but there’s some other stuff in there to make the flavour a bit richer, and it’s only the first time so it’ll be better next time, I promise, but… you like it?”

“It’s perfect,” Shiro says earnestly, and Hunk beams.  

Keith sits on Shiro’s other side, close but not quite touching.  “We can work out together later,” he suggests quietly, and Shiro smiles at Keith’s particular brand of caring.  He squeezes Keith’s shoulder, and Keith gives him a small grin.

Lance reaches around them both to shake his bowl at Hunk and Keith swats at him, which leads into a half-hearted slap fight.  Pidge burrows back against Shiro’s left side with her pad, and the music starts playing quietly from the room’s sound system, and Hunk refills Shiro’s bowl without being asked.

“I love you guys,” Shiro says with feeling.

“Aww, Shiro.  We love you too,” Hunk answers easily, and the rest make affirming noises, like it’s so obviously true that they don’t even have to think about it.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the ShiroxRest zine, a project focusing on finally letting Shiro have a break, dammit. It was my first time contributing to a physical zine, and it was super fun! A PDF of the zine is still available to buy [HERE](https://shiroxrest.tictail.com/).
> 
> My Twitter is [@paxlegomenon](https://twitter.com/paxlegomenon), and I'm always happy to chat fandom.


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